Over the course of the summer, I’ve had the chance to come home and reconnect with old friends. I had the chance to have the best summer I’ve ever had at the summer camp I’ve worked at for six years. I got to see God at work in my co-workers; in the smiling faces of our campers; in the beauty of His creation; and in the capacity to love and be loved that I’ve never encountered before. I’ve also had the opportunity to come to terms with words and actions from people within my Church family (near and far) that can only be described as mean and can only be attributed to a sinful nature.
I get it—I’m not like you. I’m not over the age of fifty. I’m not a Republican. I didn’t vote for Mitt Romney. I think legalism is a load of crap. Focus on the Family and the AFA anger me to the point of nausea. Railing against the evils of same-sex marriage and abortion while countless children starve to to death or go without a family on the Church’s watch breaks my heart. I also fully believe that a pulpit used to preach vile, deceitful, and warped politics over the redemptive, life-giving Gospel of Jesus Christ opens itself up for whatever abuse is hurled its way.
The title "Evangelical?" Don’t even get me started.
I could go on and on about what makes me different from the members of my home church. It’s now that I even catch myself and admit just how hard for me to admit that I’m actually angry and bitter. I’ve been hurt time and time again by people who are supposed to be my “church family.” When I read the words of Christ in Luke’s account of the Gospel as He rails against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, I am (now) ashamed to say that I pull up faces in my mind of specific Christians and resolve to never be like them. That’s when it fully hits me—I’m just like them. Some of my secondary theology and practice of said theology are different, yes, but in my heart I’m just as angry about something as they are.
As I was recently reading over some favorite blogs of mine and naively smiling about how much this or that pastor “gets it” in comparison to what I perceive as backwards, narrow-minded Christians, the anger and bitterness finally hit me. Yes, I’ve been wronged. Yes, I’ve been hurt. Yes, I have found other believers (at home, school, and abroad) who share my beliefs and give me hope; but I’m not progressing past the whiney, “I’VE BEEN WRONGED, PAY ATTENTION TO ME!” phase. Because of my own fallen nature, I’ve stayed immersed in the pain rather than letting God in so as to bring beauty from it.
Wow.
That’s something I haven’t wanted to admit (to myself or anybody else) for over a year now. As I rant and lament about how worthless community in the Church has become, I’m suddenly made aware of how much of an obstacle my own heart is to creating that community in a place that should be the easiest place to create it. For all my talk of redemptive love found in Jesus Christ’s salvation and how that love should dictate everything we say and do, I don’t show it like I should. Instead, I come up with a million reasons to hide behind the hurt and justify my opposition to community with a believer who may look at things differently from me.
All this time I’ve had this sort of moralistic, doesn’t-apply-to-me approach to James 3; that whole taming of the tongue thing. It was one of those universalist principles that would periodically nag at me when my cynicism turned into a mean-spirited vitriol. In verse 9, James says that “with the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings who have been made in God’s likeness.” Um. Did I read that right? While I can go on and on about how wonderful God is, I can still turn around and curse a brother or sister made in the image of God? The sinful heart creates anger, fear, bitterness, and even hatred towards others. Because of that, I’m more of a stumbling block than I could have imagined. Ouch.
With all of that being said, I would ask that this be considered a confession of sorts. I’m not the kind of person who has ever been comfortable with sharing a lot about my life with just anybody, but this is something that affects a wide array of people. Going forward, I would wholeheartedly seek forgiveness for the hardened heart and negative attitudes I’ve had toward others. If you happen to be one of those people who falls into the categories I mentioned above—I’m truly sorry if I have ever hurt you.
James 5:16 says that we are to confess our sins to one another so that we may be healed. Not a human made healing, but a healing of peace and love that comes entirely from God. Sin hurts. I don’t want to stay angry. I so desperately want a community of brothers and sisters who seek to live in and spread the Gospel of our wonderful Messiah to a world that is so desperately in need of it. For that to happen, though, we’ve got to start somewhere. In this case, that “we” starts with “me.”
I’m not saying anything new or earth-shattering here. What I am hoping and praying for, though, is that if someone who has been hurt like I have in the past reads this, they are able to take even the tiniest seed of hope with them. We don’t have to live in hurt. We don’t have to live in anger. We don’t have to live behind negative labels that those who are different give us. We don’t have to live behind the negative labels we give those who are different from us. I want to see a beautiful, diverse, different, broken, odd, freak-laden Church look past the hurt and pains that always divide us and show the world the same love and forgiveness that we’ve encountered with reckless abandon in Jesus Christ.
Seek out what may be causing your heart to keep you from community. Declare it before God and others. Strip it of its power to embitter and cripple. Join in the celebration of Life. Be healed.
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